


Not-So-Platonic Ideal

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M, Resolved Sexual Tension, Roommates, Unresolved Sexual Tension, not necessarily an alternate universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 05:38:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8389303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: How is it, that between him and Mick-freaking-Rory, Barry's the bad roommate?
For the prompt: Character A has a roommate for the first time, but is used to walking around naked in their apartment and forgets they share the space now.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Совершенно неплатонический идеал](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8547922) by [PrettyPenny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyPenny/pseuds/PrettyPenny)



"Very funny," Mick tells the whole lot of them. "I'm dying of laughter here. Now what are we really going to do?"

"We're serious," Sara says, crossing her arms in front of her. "Mick. You said yourself that there's not a lot of ways to hide yourself from these - time assassin knights -"

"I believe they refer to themselves as the Templars of Time,” Stein points out.

“That ain’t better, Grey,” Jax says. 

"Yeah, well, _them_ ,” Sara says, glaring at both of them. “Anyway. You told us the only way to hide from them is to be in the shadow of someone with a massive impact on the timeline - a key figure, or a speedster. And the Flash is both."

Mick rubs his eyes as if that will make the stupidity go away. "You all remember that I was his supervillain, right?" he asks. "We fought. I hurt his friends. He's not going to agree." 

"He already has," Ray says triumphantly. "He believes in second chances, Mick."

"Haircut, there's second chances and then there's moving your second chances into your brand new and very flammable apartment!"

"Actually, it's a refurbished prewar apartment," the Flash remarks from where he's been sitting in the back of the room. "Lots of exposed brick."

"Still flammable, okay? Trust me. There's a reason I usually stay in warehouses. Now why the hell are _you_ agreeing to this?"

"I just said the place was a refurbished prewar apartment," the Flash says with a sigh, pulling one long leg up onto his chair and dropping his chin onto his knee. "Elevator, doorman, the works. In short: I need help with the rent."

"Didn't you get left a chunk of change by that evil-mentor-guy?" Ray asks.

"Well, apparently, in _this_ timeline, I put it all into STAR Labs because I didn't want anything to do with evil-Wells' money. That's how they built the speed lab and stuff like that," the Flash says, wrinkling his nose at his past self's thoughtless idealism. "Looking at my bank account was _not_ fun, let me tell you that. Ouch."

“Why do you think I’m gonna pay rent?” Mick says, crossing his arms.

“You have money,” Sara points out. “You _told me_ you had money.”

“It’s the principle of the thing!”

“The principle here is _staying alive_.”

"And what if I burn the place down?" Mick asks mutinously, even though he can feel himself losing this argument. 

"I'll be there – literally! – to stop you," the Flash points out, quite reasonably.

“You’ll have to tell me who you are,” Mick points out in return.

“…you don’t already know?” the Flash says, looking impressed. “Good on you, Snart.”

Actually, Mick just hadn’t cared enough to pay attention to the fact that the other guys kept slipping up and calling the Flash “Barry”, because he might be a criminal but he’s not enough of a jerk to call people by anything other than what they said they wanted to be called, but whatever. 

The Flash is suddenly standing right in front of Mick, cowl down, hand outstretched, and a great big grin on his surprisingly attractive face. “My name’s Barry Allen,” he says. “Nice to meet you, roomie.”

This is going to be terrible.

\-------------------------------------

Somehow, when Barry had thought about this whole roommate thing, he’d imagined a lot more – well, conflict. Mick Rory: arsonist extraordinaire, ex-supervillain, ex-bounty hunter; it didn’t really sound like something that was going to make for excellent roommate material. Honestly, Barry had already come up with a half-dozen stories to tell people about how he had an awful roommate and how he really couldn’t go out tonight, sorry, have to go make sure the guy isn’t going to burn down the apartment. Again.

Turns out he was being super judgy without any basis whatsoever, because he is _totally wrong_.

Oh, no.

It turns out that Mick Rory is a _great_ roommate. He keeps his stuff surprisingly tidy (he keeps _Barry’s_ stuff tidy, too – he says it’s habit from being in prison), he’s quiet at night (also prison), he respects Barry’s food and never steals it (there’s criminal and there’s just being rude, and that’s just rude, apparently), he keeps his music and movies down to a reasonable volume (…when Barry isn’t watching along, because Mick apparently has excellent taste in underrated action flicks), he’s willing to split Netflix costs…he even does the laundry.

Sometimes by _hand_.

What the hell. 

“You know we have a washing machine, right?” Barry asks desperately. 

“Yeah,” Mick says. “But this says hand-wash only, and it’s not like I’m doing anything else.”

Barry would be so much more okay with this if Mick didn’t do the laundry in their bathroom while half-naked.

Mick Rory, apparently, does not approve of shirts if it’s not necessary.

Not while he’s doing the laundry, not while he’s watching TV, not while he’s doing an impressively lengthy and absolutely hypnotizing work-out routine that involves a fair amount of grunting and sweating. In fairness, you don’t get muscles like _that_ just by sitting around all day; Barry has no idea why he thought that. But still. Exercise routine of partial undress. Every day. 

In sum total: Barry’s totally not going to survive this.

It’s been less than a week and he’s in hell. Hot, perfect roommate hell.

How is it, that between him and Mick-freaking-Rory, _Barry's_ the bad roommate?

“Hey, Scarlet,” Mick says. “I’ve got a craving for Italian. You mind?”

“Not at all,” Barry says automatically, brain still stalled on the fact that Mick asks permission for shit like that. His last roommate once put a whole box of curry on Barry’s bed and it stained so deep the mattress had to be sent out for cleaning. “Can I have some?”

“Sure,” Mick says.

Barry comes home after another endlessly long day with _Julian_ – man, Barry _hates_ that guy – to find that Mick has apparently spent _his_ day achieving godhood when it comes to the roommate ideal.

Mountains of perfectly cooked pasta, steaming hot in several different bowls – a hearty meat sauce that smells like heaven – large, plump meatballs covered in sauce – eggplant parm and chicken in lemon – at least three types of roasted vegetables – 

There were even _breadsticks_.

_Garlic_ breadsticks. 

“Holy crap,” Barry says. 

“Haircut mentioned that you had a high metabolism,” Mick says with a shrug. He’s shirtless again. Barry’s life is so unfair. “So I made extra. Too much?”

“Wait. Did you –” Barry looks around. No take-out boxes. “Did you say you _made this_?”

“Sure,” Mick says. “I used to work as a cook in between real jobs. You know, when we were laying low.”

Incredibly attractive roommate, does the laundry, cleans the living room, and _cooks_. Doesn’t mind Barry running out at all hours to do Flash things. _Knows_ about the Flash thing.

Barry is abruptly possessed by the desire to run back his time and bring his mother forward, because this is serious take-him-home-to-meet-the-parents territory, and they're not even _dating_.

...pity, that.

Also, is Barry actually putting anything into this roommate relationship other than his half of the rent?

The food is just as divine as it smells.

“I’m the bad roommate,” Barry says to Mick half-way through dinner. Mick’s brought out some excellent beer, which Barry can appreciate the taste of even without being able to get drunk. Tastier than wine, too. “I can’t believe I’m the bad roommate here. Not that you’re not great. You are great. _How_ are you such a great roommate?”

“I used to live with Leonard Snart,” Mick says dryly. “It’s all self-defense.”

“Huh, so he was the messy one?”

“You know how there are videos online of asshole cats that seem to find pleasure knocking things over?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s Snart.”

“Wow, _so much is explained_.”

“I know, right?”

After that, things just sort of get…easier. Harder. Barry’s slowly going insane, okay? 

He comes home one day and Mick’s watching TV wearing nothing but a _towel_.

Barry squeaks.

“Oh, hey, Scarlet,” Mick says, twisting around to look at him. “You’re home early.”

“Julian had to go out for a thing,” Barry says, watching a droplet of water slowly make its way down Mick’s collarbone. “So I finished up all my work super-fast and came home. Um. You realize you’re naked?”

Mick blinks. “Oh, yeah,” he says. “Sorry, I forgot that was a thing.”

“You _forgot that was a thing_?”

Mick shrugs. “Never seemed that important. Do you mind?”

Barry is going to have images of a mostly-naked Mick Rory – now in beautiful high-definition – going through his mind forever. 

Possibly accompanied by a mostly-naked Leonard Snart.

Bad brain! Bad! Bad brain!

Barry’s so busy yelling at his brain about not lusting over (possibly) dead supervillain-slash-heroes in conjunction with his _current_ supervillain-slash-hero-slash-roommate, he’s not actually sure how he ends up making out with Mick on the couch.

“I think I’ve ruined everything,” he tells Julian the next day.

“I don’t care,” Julian replies.

“It was bad enough when he was just shirtless and doing the laundry and stuff, you know?” Barry says. 

“I don’t know. I also don’t care.”

“And I mean, laundry and cleaning the apartment – that’s already great for a roommate – and I mean he was always shirtless – I’ve mentioned the shirtless thing, right?”

“So _very_ many times already. Please, feel free to stop anytime.”

“But then he turned out to be able to cook – and he’s funny – and he’s surprisingly nice, which I totally wouldn’t have expected –”

“You remember I hate you, right?”

“Ditto. Anyway, it’s like, we hated each other, but now it turns out he’s this great person underneath? Was I just being judging? And – I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but he’s, like, _insanely_ attractive. And a really great kisser.”

“Please have your gay crisis somewhere else.”

“Oh, no, I’ve been out as bi for years,” Barry says distractedly. “Anyway, it’s just – I know he’s still hung up on his old partner, you know? Guy just died. Am I moving too quickly? Do I want to be moving quickly? Do I want to be doing this at all?”

“Please kill me.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s just – he has some history with my friends and me, you know, and he’s still got some problems with the fire thing and all, but he’s so much _better_ , you can really see how good of a guy he is, but everyone’s going to go ballistic – ”

“You know what, I think I’m done with this sample. Why don’t we take off early for lunch?” Julian announces.

“…what, really?” Barry says, blinking. “You never want to take off early.”

“I am _making an exception_ ,” Julian says through gritted teeth.

Huh. Barry wonders what’s bugging him.

Luckily, instead of having to go home and face the music – and the attractive roommate with whom he was making out with yesterday – there’s a meta-human attack.

Barry is so happy, he could hug them.

Except for the fact that they’re apparently a pointy hedgehog-like creature.

Someone actually went to Doctor Alchemy and asked to be turned back into this thing.

_Some people_ , man.

Turns out those quills explode and the encasing renders the meta virtually impossible to fight, though, which is super annoying. Mick ends up coming in to help with his heat gun, which sets off a few of the exploding quills right on the guy’s back, knocking him out and disabling him long enough for CCPD to take him in. 

Barry ends up making out with Mick again, but the guy _did_ just help him save Central City. It seems only fair.

“Are we dating?” he asks at one point. That seems like an important point to make. 

“Does dating mean more kissing?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’re dating.”

“Good to know,” Barry says, and climbs into Mick’s lap. 

(Maybe if he gets Mick to cook for them, all his friends and family won’t kill him when he explains…)


End file.
